Despite the apparent likelihood of Jonathan Drouin being traded this offseason, it’s still jarring when seeing a player that young, with that much upside, being shipped out of town. We know the reasons why, but it’s still a big gamble for the team to take, even with Mikhail Sergachev coming back in return.

I wrote, at the time of the trade, about the fantasy implications of this trade. One aspect I glossed over, and should clarify, is Drouin’s five-on-five production. It hasn’t been bad for his career – 1.70 points per 60 minutes – but not the level we’d expect for a future star.

One explanation for this is Drouin was used, for good chunks of his brief Tampa career, as an offensive catalyst for players who weren’t offensive catalysts. In particular, Drouin’s most-common line mate as a member of the Lightning was Alex Killorn. Below is a table from puckalytics.com that shows Tampa’s goals-for when the two were on the ice together, and apart, at five-on-five (not including the playoffs) without Steven Stamkos on the line:

That is an abysmal goal rate. Nearly 25 percent of Drouin’s five-on-five time over the last three years was spent scoring at a lower rate than what Arizona produced as a team in 2016-17.

To this point, over his Lightning career, Drouin played at least 200 five-on-five minutes seven forwards: Killorn, Stamkos, Valtteri Filppula, Brian Boyle, Vladislav Namestnikov, Cedric Paquette, and Ryan Callahan. Again, Drouin was largely used to bring depth scoring to a team that relied on four players for scoring: Stamkos, and the Triplets. The new Montreal Canadien did not spend much time with any of those four players.

Playing a top-six role with actual scoring forwards, combined with his shot increase, should mean greener pastures for Drouin and his five-on-five production. This is also going to hurt the depth scoring of Tampa Bay. He was often asked to carry the third line offensively, and there’s no one left to do that.

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Just a reminder of the goings on this weekend:

• Saturday afternoon sees the beginning of the moratorium on trades and waivers in the NHL beginning at 3 PM ET. Teams cannot trade or waive players until after the expansion draft, save for Las Vegas and their trade partners.
• Protection lists must also be submitted late Saturday afternoon by individual teams no later than 5 PM ET. Those lists will be revealed Sunday morning (depending on your time zone) on NHL.com

This is going to be a big weekend in the NHL, and a big three weeks are ahead for fantasy hockey owners. Dobber Hockey will have your fantasy needs covered.

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Simon Despres will be bought out by the Anaheim Ducks on Friday. He is set to be free to sign with whichever team he chooses. Anaheim will have a little over $1.2 million count against the cap in 2017-18, and less in season afterwards. Note that he was placed on waivers for the purpose of a buy out, so he could be claimed, but that seems unlikely. 

What the future holds for Despres is certainly up in the air. He had concussion issues two seasons ago, and he played just one game this past year for the Ducks with the same concerns. We have seen concussions end careers before, let’s just hope this case is more Clarke MacArthur and less Marc Savard. All the best to him and hopefully he’s back on NHL soon.

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Throughout the offseason, I’m going team by team and discussing the elite, or relevant, fantasy performers. Next in alphabetical order is the Edmonton Oilers.

Connor McDavid

Not much needs to be said with regards to the Edmonton saviour. He won the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s leading point producer, put up the largest single-season five-on-five point total (63) since Evgeni Malkin’s 66 in 2011-12, was the first player age 20 or younger to crack 100 points in a decade, and managed 27 power-play points. He’s knocking on the door of being the top player on the planet.

He’s also still not in his physical prime yet. Mercy.

As mentioned in a recent Ramblings, I do wonder if he settles into being more of a distributor than a goal-scorer, which has fantasy implications. Even if that’s true, he is going to be a top-3 fantasy option for a decade. Enjoy the ride.

Leon Draisaitl

A 77-point season as a 21-year-old is an incredibly impressive feat. In fact, Draisaitl is the only 21-year-old player since the most recent lockout to post at least 75 points in a single campaign. The last time it was done was by Steven Stamkos, John Tavares, and (soon-to-be former?) teammate Jordan Eberle in 2011-12. It appears this third overall pick is on the verge of annual fantasy stardom.

There are two concerns here.

First, the shooting percentage was very high. This past year, the young German shot 17.9 percent at five-on-five when skating alongside Connor McDavid. To put that into context, the only forward with a higher shooting percentage at five-on-five for the season (minimum 1000 minutes played) was Rickard Rakell. When he wasn’t skating with McDavid, he shot 6.4 percent at five-on-five. For his career, when not with the superstar centre, he’s shooting 9.9 percent.

Second, his individual shot rate was very low, ranking 120^th among 136 forwards with at least 1000 minutes played in shots per minute. He shot less often than Ryan Dzingel, Dwight King, and Brandon Sutter. That is really not great company to keep in this regard. There are some elite distributors who shot less – Joe Thornton and Ryan Getzlaf in particular – but putting him in that category at this point of his career is not prudent.

Over his three seasons, Draisaitl has played over 1591 of his 2608 five-on-five minutes with either Taylor Hall or Connor McDavid. He produced 60 of his 84 career five-on-five points playing with one of those two on the ice. That means his five-on-five production playing away from McDavid and Hall is about 1.42 points per 60 minutes. That is lower than what Brian Gionta posted (1.47) in 2016-17.

This point is important because Hall is obviously gone, and it’s far from a sure thing that Draisaitl remains on McDavid’s line next year. This team has envisioned him as a second-line centre to their franchise cornerstone, a spot currently occupied by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, a player who may be finding a new home in short order.

For now, Draisaitl has the level of upside shown this past year provided he remains on the top line. The coming months will be telling, however. If he is set to be moved to carry a second line by himself, the lack of production playing away from elite players, and a very low shooting rate, should be giant red flags to fantasy owners.

Oscar Klefbom

It seems like so long ago at this point, but it’s easy to forget that for Andrej Sekera was on the top power-play unit to start the season, and for most of the first half of the year, really. Klefbom didn’t take over until January (if I’m mistaken, please correct me). He still managed 16 power-play points despite not skating on the top unit for about half the year – a top unit that was heavily used.

Production for the 23-year-old (24 in July) isn’t limited to the power play, however. Over the last three seasons, spanning over 3000 minutes played, Klefbom’s five-on-five points per 60 minutes (0.89) is neck-and-neck with Kevin Shattenkirk (0.90). He is also a defenceman who can drive the play, so he does everything that you’d want a legitimate top-pair defenceman to do.

As a brief rant, a healthy Klefbom is one of the more over-looked aspects of the Oilers season. McDavid gets the headlines, Cam Talbot gets the mentions, the emergence of Draisaitl gets people excited. Their top defenceman being healthy, however, was a huge reason for this team’s success. But I digress.

The individual shot rate of the young defenceman was also among the league leaders for 2016-17. Anytime you see a blue liner shoot at a similar rate to Justin Faulk, it’s good news.

We have, then, a defenceman who should see a lot of minutes, takes a lot of shots, will likely run a frequently-used top power-play unit that features McDavid, drives the play, and is in his prime. This smells like a breakout fantasy season upcoming for Klefbom.